IMMANUEL KANT(1724-1804) ON HAPPINESS

                                   

IMMANUEL KANT(1724-1804) ON HAPPINESS 

 

"Something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for”...Immanuel  Kant 

The triadic formula “Something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for” is almost universally attributed to Immanuel Kant, but there’s no evidence he ever wrote it. The earliest sources point instead to 19th-century Scottish thinkers like Thomas Chalmers or the essayist Richard Sharp. The misattribution is itself philosophically interesting: we want Kant, the austere moralist, to sound warm and practical, because the quote captures ordinary psychological wisdom. But Kant’s actual project in ethics was to separate morality from happiness altogether, and that contrast is instructive.

For Kant, happiness means “the condition of a rational being in the world with whom everything goes according to his wish and will.” The problem is that wishes are empirical, subjective, and shifting. What makes me happy today might make you miserable, and even I can’t predict what will satisfy me next year. So Kant argues that we cannot build a universal moral law on such unstable ground. If your maxim is “I’ll keep promises only when it makes me happy,” that can’t be willed as a universal law, because it would destroy the practice of promising. That’s why Kant grounds ethics in the 'Categorical Imperative': act only on maxims you could will to be universal laws, regardless of what you desire. Commands aimed at happiness are merely 'hypothetical imperatives'  “if you want X, do Y” , and they lack moral authority.

Yet Kant doesn’t banish happiness. In the ,"Critique of Practical Reason" he introduces the "highest good” : a world where virtue and happiness are proportioned, so the morally best people are also the most flourishing. Because we don’t see that correlation in experience, practical reason must “postulate” God and immortality to make the highest good possible. This is where “hope” enters Kant’s system, but it’s rational hope, not wishful thinking. It’s the assumption we need to avoid seeing morality as futile. Kant also admits an indirect duty to promote our own happiness in 'Metaphysics of Morals".  Not because happiness is good in itself, but because extreme misery, illness, or poverty are “great temptations to transgress duty.” A starving person finds it harder to be honest; an exhausted parent finds it harder to be patient. So prudence serves morality.

If we run the popular triad through Kant’s framework, each term gets a moral upgrade. “Something to do” becomes more than busywork. In ,"Groundwork"  , Kant says we have a duty to develop our talents, because a world of idle people can’t be universally willed. So your work must be morally permissible and contribute to your own perfection. “Someone to love” has to pass the 'Formula of Humanity': treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as means. Kant distinguishes pathological love or affection you feel  from  practical love,  and the duty of benevolence. You can’t be commanded to like someone, but you can be commanded not to exploit them. Love grounded in use or sentiment alone fails the test. “Something to hope for” for Kant isn’t a raise or a vacation. It’s the hope that the moral order makes sense, that virtue isn’t ultimately absurd. That’s why he calls the postulates of God and immortality “matters of faith” required by practical reason.

Kant gives us  normative ethics : constraints that prevent those three from collapsing into self-interest or harm. Purpose without duty can be cruelty. Love without respect can be manipulation. Hope without reason can be delusion. Kant’s coldness is really a demand for integrity. He wants us not to use happiness to justify wrong actions, and don’t let our pursuit of happiness undermine the dignity of  persons. In that sense, Kant doesn’t reject the triad; he disciplines it. He would agree one needs something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for ,  but only if each is held to the standard of the moral law.

Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724, in Königsberg, Prussia  ,modern-day Kaliningrad, Russia to a Pietist artisan family.His father was a harness maker and his mother Anna Regina raised him with strict religious discipline. At age 8  he entered the Collegium Fridericianum for Latin and theology, then enrolled at the University of Konigsberg in 1740 at age 16, where he studied philosophy, mathematics, and physics under Martin Knutzen, who introduced him to Newton and the Leibniz-Wolff rationalist tradition. After his father’s death in 1746, Kant left without a degree and spent 9 years as a private tutor for families near Konigsberg. He returned in 1755, earning his Magister degree . He lectured for 15 years on metaphysics, logic, ethics, geography, and anthropology before being appointed professor of logic and metaphysics at Konigsberg in 1770. Kant’s critical philosophy later shaped German Idealists like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who developed his ideas on freedom and reason. Schopenhauer  called his book , "Critique of Pure Reason" as the “the most important 

 book ever written”. Later Neo-Kantians like Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer in the 19th–20th centuries; and 20th-century figures including Hannah Arendt  in political theory, John Rawls in ethics with his Kantian conception of justice, and Jurgen Habermas  in discourse ethics brought his philosophy . His work remains foundational in epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

KANT AND BHAGWAD GITA

Though it has not been established  that Immanuel Kant  read the Bhagwad Gita or the  Upanishads or the Vedas ; Schopenhauer, arriving a generation later, would be the first to proclaim their influence, yet Kant's  critical philosophy nonetheless traces lines that run uncannily parallel to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta. Kant’s discovery that space and time are not properties of things-in-themselves, but a priori forms through which the human mind must intuit all appearances, echoes Advaita’s insistence that desa, kaala, and nimitta or the  space, time, and causality  belong to Maya, the empirical veil, and not to  Brahman, the unconditioned real. His distinction between phenomena, the world as it appears to us, and noumena, the world as it is in itself, mirrors the Vedantic division between  vyavaharika or the realm of conventional truth, and paramarthika or the plane of absolute truth. Even his doctrine of synthetic a priori judgments  or knowledge that is both universal and necessary, yet not drawn from experience ,  opens room for the Advaitic claim that Self-knowledge is immediate and self-revealing, not a product of the senses. To be clear, Kant halts where Advaita advances: he holds that the noumenal, including the Self, cannot be known as an object of cognition, while Advaita proclaims that the Self is known not as an object, but as the very light by which all knowing occurs. This fertile comparison did not escape the great philosopher-statesman Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, who, in his 1918 study ,"The Ethics of the Bhagavadgita and Kant" , placed the Gita’s doctrine of "nishkama karma" or action without attachment to fruits ,  alongside Kant’s categorical imperative, showing how both traditions subordinate happiness to duty, yet nourish the hope that virtue and well-being may finally converge.Dr S Radhakrshnan writes :

"Turning our attention to the moral law, we find that both Gita and Kant preach duty for duty's sake. "Your business is with action alone, not by any means with fruit. Let not the fruit of action be your motive to action." And Kant explains , " That an action done from duty, derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realisation of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition, by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire."

( Avtar Mota)

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

UPANISHADS IN GLOBAL MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

                                         

UPANISHADS  IN GLOBAL MANAGEMENT EDUCATION 

“ For him who sees everywhere oneness, how can there be delusion or grief?”…Isha Upanishad

The Upanishads found ardent Western admirers from the 19th century onwards, most famously the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who called them “the most profitable and most elevating reading in the world” and kept the 'Oupnekhat 'on his desk as “the solace of my life”; American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, whose notions of the Self and Over-Soul echo 'Tat Tvam Asi',  the quantum physicists Erwin Schrödinger, who kept them at his bedside and saw “the unity of Vedanta” in wave mechanics, Werner Heisenberg, who claimed “quantum theory will not look ridiculous to people who have read Vedanta,” Niels Bohr, who declared “I go to the Upanishad to ask questions,” and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who learnt Sanskrit to read them; poets T.S. Eliot, who ended 'The Waste Land'  with “Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata” and “Shantih Shantih Shantih” from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad , W.B. Yeats, who translated ten principal Upanishads, and W. Somerset Maugham, whose 'The Razor’s Edge' takes its title from the Katha Upanishad; and psychologist Carl Jung, who drew on Upanishadic Atman for his concept of the Self, alongside Aldous Huxley, who grounded 'The Perennial Philosophy' in their teachings.

The foremost Muslim lover of the Upanishads was the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh, who in 1657 worked with Benares Pandits to translate fifty Upanishads into Persian as "Sirr-i-Akbar", “The Greatest Secret,” and wrote "Majma-ul-Bahrain", “The Mingling of Two Oceans,” to demonstrate the unity of Sufism and Vedanta; his Persian version later reached Europe as the Latin 'Oupnek’hat' and profoundly influenced Schopenhauer. Centuries earlier, the Persian polymath Al-Biruni studied the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutras in 11th-century India, comparing them to Greek philosophy in his book "Ta’rikh-ul-Hind". The Naqshbandi Sufi Mirza Mazhar Jan-i Janan speculated that the Upanishads contained revealed truth. In the modern era, Allama Iqbal drew on Upanishadic notions of the Self in "Asrar-e-Khudi " and "Ramooz-e-Bekhudi ", whilst Maulana Abul Kalam Azad blended Islamic philosophy with Upanishadic insight in "Tazkira" and "Ghubar-e-Qatir". Contemporary figures include Sri Mumtaz Ali Khan from Kerala, who holds discourses on the Upanishads at Kumbh Mela, and scholar Dr Intaj Malek, author of "Upanishads and Islamic Mysticism " , who equates Sufi Fana with Upanishadic union with Brahman; even TV anchor Suhaib Ilyasi found solace in the Upanishads during imprisonment. The 16th-century ,"Allopanishad" , though a later forgery written in Akbar’s court to promote Din-i-Ilahi and rejected by Swami Vivekananda and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, nonetheless reflects this long-standing Muslim engagement with Upanishadic thought as an expression of divine oneness beyond creedal boundaries.

The Upanishads are now part of MBA curricula worldwide, including at IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, Harvard, MIT Sloan, London Business School, Stanford GSB, Rotterdam School of Management, and INSEAD. Taught not as religion but as Indian Knowledge Systems, they address modern leadership gaps: ethics, self-awareness, and decision-making under ambiguity.

 Upanishads commonly taught are :

 

1.ISHA: Leadership with detachment_: “Tena tyaktena bhunjitha” is taught for sustainable stewardship.  

2.KATHA: Goal Clarity:  Nachiketa’s Shreyas vs Preyas_teaches long-term focus over short-term gains.  

3.KENA : Humility:  This Upanishad is taught to know “Who drives the mind?” And also taught to check the ego in decision-making.  

4.MUNDAKA: Wisdom vs skill: This Upanishad is taught to understand Para vs Apara Vidya to distinguish technical training from holistic judgment.  

5.TAITTRIYA: Values & motivation: The five sheaths( Pancha Kosa )  model from this Upanishad is used in OB and HR  for team development.  

6.CHANDOGYA: Inclusive Leadership: Tat Tvam Asi from this Upanishad drives empathy and stakeholder thinking.  

7.BRIHADARANYAKA: Strategic Clarity:  The Neti Neti concept from this Upanishad is taught as a framework to eliminate the non-essential in decision-making.

I was told by a MBA pass out from a prestigious University in the US that he learned the story of Satyakama from a professor during his studies for the MBA degree. The Satyakama Jabala story from Chandogya Upanishad (4.4) is taught in MBA programmes at IIM Bangalore, IIM Ahmedabad, Harvard, and INSEAD as a case study in ethical leadership. Satyakama was a boy of unknown parentage who wanted to study. The Guru asked his lineage. The boy honestly says, “I don’t know, my mother said she served many people  ”. The Guru says, “You are a real Brahmaṇa because you spoke the truth.”

Sent to tend 400 cows, he returns years later with 1000, having learnt from nature along the way. The lesson: leadership rests on Satya (integrity), Shraddha (commitment), and learning through action, not pedigree. B-schools use it to teach authenticity, merit over background, humility in menial tasks, and building trust through truth, framing character as the real credential in conscious capitalism. The story conveys that truthfulness, humility, and eagerness to learn are the real marks of a developed personality.

In India, Prof. S.K. Chakraborty of IIM Calcutta first introduced the Upanishads into management education in the early 1990s. He founded the "Management Centre for Human Values" at IIM-C and launched the course ,"Management by Human Values" , using the Isha, Kena, and Katha Upanishads to address ethics and leadership gaps in Western models. His 1995 book , "Ethics in Management: Vedantic Perspectives" established the framework, earning him recognition as the father of Indian Ethos in Management. Prof. Subhash Sharma and Prof. Peter Pruzan were early introducers of Upanishadic values in modern management science in Europe, while Prof. Bill George helped mainstream it in the US.

Upanishadic wisdom is taught in Japanese management schools, though mainly in electives and executive education. Hitotsubashi ICS has incorporated "Brahman-Atman" concepts into knowledge management modules, while Kyoto University and Keio Business School include the Isha and Kena Upanishads in "Spirituality in Business" programmes. The Upanishads are usually presented as comparative Eastern philosophy for global leadership.

In China, Upanishads are taught to management students mainly in executive and elective programmes at top schools. Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management includes the Isha and Katha Upanishads in its Eastern Wisdom and Leadership modules, while CEIBS Shanghai uses "Tat Tvam Asi" in Global Leadership" courses. Tsinghua SEM and Fudan School of Management also reference Upanishadic ideas in cross-cultural ethics and leadership electives. It remains niche, presented as comparative Eastern philosophy alongside Taoism and Confucianism .

In Russia, Upanishadic knowledge appears in management education only in niche settings. Higher School of Economics (HSE) Moscow includes the Isha and Kena Upanishads in Philosophy of Management electives, while Skolkovo School of Management uses ,"Tat Tvam Asi " and "Neti Neti" in Conscious Leadership executive modules. MGIMO University also references the Upanishads in Cross-Cultural Management courses covering Indian business culture.

I am informed that some Upanishads are also taught to management students in Pakistan in some select institutions : LUMS : The Suleman Dawood School of Business lists ,"Comparative Philosophy and Ethics" as an elective for Management Science students. Course outlines from the Humanities and Social Sciences department show the Katha and Isha Upanishads used alongside Islamic and Western ethical frameworks. At IBA Karachi, The School of Social Sciences offers philosophy and leadership electives where Upanishadic ideas on self-inquiry and detachment appear. They're taught comparatively with Rumi, Iqbal, and Stoic thought. However, the Upanishads are presented as comparative wisdom, not as management doctrine.

At IIMs in India , courses like “Leadership through Literature” and “Spirituality for Global Managers” use these texts as case studies for stress management, ethical leadership, and conscious capitalism. The goal: build leaders who combine competence with inner clarity.

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

BOOK REVIEW :"HALF PADDLE DOUBLE SEAT :MY KASHMIR MEMORIES AND MORE"

                           

Book Review: ,'Half Paddle Double Seat — My Kashmir Memories & More:

Author:** Dr. Inder Krishen Kilam

Publisher:** Rudransh Books Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi

Price:** ₹465/=

ISBN:** 978-93-49865-81-5 

There are books that arrive as literature, and there are books that arrive as memory. Dr. Inder Krishen Kilam’s 'Half Paddle Double Seat — My Kashmir Memories & More'  belongs to the second category, though at places it quietly enters the first. It is not merely a memoir of one individual; it is a family album, a cultural notebook, a record of Kashmiri Pandit middle-class life, and a gentle act of remembrance after rupture. The author himself says that he wrote it “not to be remembered, but to remember,” and this single line gives the reader the key to the entire work.

The title is charming, unusual and meaningful. “Half Paddle Double Seat” comes from the author’s childhood in Srinagar, when, being too short to ride a bicycle in the usual way, he learned to move it by using only half-pedals, and yet could carry another person on the double seat. What begins as a boyhood anecdote becomes a metaphor for life. Many people born in modest families know this condition well: resources are limited, responsibilities arrive early, but the journey cannot be postponed. One must learn to balance, move, carry, endure and still smile. This is the governing spirit of the book.

Dr. Kilam was born in Srinagar into a middle-class Kashmiri Pandit family. His early pages take us through Fateh Kadal, Alikadal, Karfali Mohalla, Karan Nagar, Mission School, DAV School, Amar Singh College and the many lanes, bridges, temples, schools and homes that once formed the breathing map of Kashmiri Pandit life in Srinagar. The book is rich in names: relatives, teachers, neighbours, friends, colleagues, mentors, domestic helpers, officials, priests and ordinary men and women. Some readers may feel the details are excessive, but that is also the nature of memory in a displaced community. A name recorded is a name saved from silence.

The early chapters carry the fragrance of old Srinagar. The author remembers school prayers, teachers, picnics, family rituals, food habits, bicycle rides, the Jhelum, Dal Lake, Karan Nagar homes, the solemn dignity of elders and the affectionate discipline of parents. He writes of his mother, Bahanjee, and father, Baboojee, with reverence. The mother emerges as a figure of quiet courage and household wisdom; the father as a responsible man who tries to hold two families together despite financial and health difficulties. Such portraits are not ornamental. They show the values that shaped a generation: restraint, education, duty, family honour and self-respect.

One of the most attractive features of the memoir is its lack of false heroism. Dr. Kilam does not project himself as a celebrity. In fact, the book’s strength lies in its ordinariness. He tells us of mistakes, fears, missed chances, setbacks, job searches and adjustments. He writes of the burden of responsibility after family tragedies, of career shifts from All India Radio to Punjab National Bank, and later to academics. He records his professional rise in PNB, where he served for more than three decades and retired as Deputy General Manager. Later, he entered academic life at Manav Rachna institutions, becoming professor, head of department, dean of students’ welfare, and also associated with community radio. The journey is steady, not glamorous; but it is precisely this steadiness that makes it credible.

The chapter “PhD@69” is among the most inspiring parts of the book. The author’s academic desire did not die even when life interrupted it. He had earlier lost opportunities, including his research plans, because of family responsibilities and later a painful litigation linked to his banking profession. Yet the urge to study survived. Completing a Ph.D. at the age of 69 is not just an academic achievement; it is a moral statement. It tells younger readers that learning is not a phase of life but a discipline of the mind.

The painful chapter dealing with banking-related court litigation reveals another aspect of the author’s life: endurance under unfair pressure. The book refers to a fabricated or baseless case connected with a bank loan defaulter, and the long legal battle that followed. This episode affected his health and disrupted his academic plans. Yet he continued. In this respect, the memoir becomes a document of middle-class resilience. Many Indian families know this story in one form or another: a decent man caught in a system, spending years proving what should have been obvious from the beginning.

For readers connected with Kashmir, the most moving sections are those that preserve the social world before the upheaval of 1990. The chapter on Malla Aziz, called “Our Man Friday,” stands out. Through Abdul Aziz, Dr. Kilam recalls a time when human relationships crossed religious lines without publicity, slogans or seminars. These were everyday bonds built through work, trust, dependence and affection. Such memories are precious because they neither deny the later tragedy nor reduce the past to hatred. They tell us that Kashmir was once lived through relationships, not merely argued through politics.

The chapter on the migration of Kashmiri Pandits is naturally one of the saddest in the book. Dr. Kilam does not write as a political analyst; he writes as someone whose family and community lived through loss, fear, dispersal and the slow pain of dislocation. For Kashmiri Pandits, memory is not nostalgia alone; it is evidence. Homes were sold, neighbourhoods emptied, temples and social networks were left behind, and generations grew up away from the soil that had shaped their ancestors. The author’s ancestral connection with Kashmir remains alive through visits to sacred places like Mata Kheer Bhawani, Hari Parbat, Zeethyaer and Shankaracharya Mandir. These visits are not tourism; they are acts of belonging. This chapter records how a community survived with dignity even when it faced hostile environment on all fronts. In this chapter, one also comes across a very evocative poem of Indra Kilam, wife of Dr. Kilam. Returning to her motherland after 1990, she holds a dialogue with the autumn Chinar:

"Which law took away our rights

we never even came to know.

Even the land we had bought

is no longer ours today.

At the doorstep of justice,

there is not even a mention of it.”

Land “slipped away from closed fists like grains of sand,”yet she tells the vermilion Chinar that spring will bloom again, even as “the autumn of our abandoned courtyard still stands there, colourless and frozen in time.” Prose and poetry together lift this chapter beyond memoir. It is testimony to loss and resilience, accusation without hysteria, grief without self-pity. 

The book also includes photographs, family trees and personal records. These visual elements give the memoir a documentary value. The family tree of the Kilams, the school photographs, family images and Kashmir-related memories help the reader locate the author inside a broader social and genealogical frame. In many modern books, such details may be edited out for smoothness. Here they should be retained, because the book is partly a private archive made public.The language of the book is simple, direct and conversational.  Its purpose is not stylistic brilliance. Its purpose is preservation. And in that task, it succeeds. The author’s tone is candid and sincere. He does not exaggerate suffering, nor does he hide emotion. He writes like a man opening old trunks: some documents are neatly arranged, some are folded, some carry stains, but all have value.

The foreword by Padma Shri Pran Kishore Kaul rightly notes the courage required for an ordinary person to write his life. Autobiographies are usually associated with statesmen, artists, revolutionaries, film stars or public intellectuals. Dr. Kilam’s memoir challenges that assumption. Every life that has passed through history carries history within it. The life of a Kashmiri Pandit child born around the time of Independence, educated in Srinagar, employed in radio, banking and academics, and later displaced emotionally from the land of his birth, is not an ordinary life in the shallow sense. It is an ordinary life touched by extraordinary historical currents.

The emotional centre of the book is family. Grandparents, parents, brothers, sister, wife, sons, daughters-in-law and granddaughters appear not as decorative mentions but as the structure of the author’s world. The book is dedicated to his granddaughters Meyhaa, Kaira and Inaya, and this dedication explains its real audience. Dr. Kilam is speaking to the next generation. He is telling them: this is where we came from, these are the people who made us, these were our struggles, these were our values, and this was our Kashmir.

"Half Paddle Double Seat" is not a book of grand claims. It is a book of lived truth. It tells us that memory, when honestly recorded, becomes service. Dr. Kilam has pedalled through life with effort, balance and dignity. In doing so, he has carried not only his own story on the double seat, but also a fragment of Kashmir that deserves to be remembered. It is ultimately a quiet triumph of remembering against erasure. For the Kashmiri reader, the book will awaken many personal echoes. For the non-Kashmiri reader, it offers an intimate entry into a community’s social history. For younger readers, it offers a lesson in perseverance. For older readers, it may provoke a question: have we written down our own memories before they disappear? For the general reader, it is a measured entry into a civilidation’s continuity and a community’s endurance. Every reader of the book has something to gain and something to learn from what Dr. Kilam has recorded; accordingly, it becomes a must-read. 

Written  without vanity and without bitterness, yet every page carries the weight of a community’s lived truth and a man’s unbroken dignity. In an age of noise, Dr. Kilam has chosen the harder path: to record, to preserve, to bear witness.  This is not a volume to skim and shelve. It belongs in libraries, in syllabi on displacement and resilience, and on the family shelf beside the photograph albums. Buy it, annotate it, gift it because some books preserve literature, and some preserve a people. This one does both.

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

DELAY IS DENIAL BUT MEMORY IS STUBBORN

                                           

                  ( Naranag Temple ruins in Kashmir)

DELAY IS DENIAL BUT MEMORY IS STUBBORN

For the exiled Kashmiri Pandits, restorative justice is not merely delayed; it is denied ; deferred across generations until memory itself is asked to shoulder the burden of proof. Across too many quarters, their uprooting, their ethnic cleansing, their three and a half decades of unhomed grief remain unatoned, as though naming the crime would implicate the present.

Beneath the polished rhetoric of “Dignified Return” lies an abyss of silence, vast and calculated, more eloquent than any eulogy and more damning than any indictment , implying that return is unwelcome . And the reluctance to acknowledge the suffering of the exiled by the people with whom they are now  being proposed to relive, to rebuild, to reshare streets and institutions,  has not changed for better . The false narrative that “they left of their own accord” remains still widespread on the ground.

The acknowledgement of the grief of the exiled community demands facing truth with courage and conviction. To the younger generation of the majority community in Kashmir, the exiled natives remain outsiders. For many elders from the majority community in Kashmir, the refusal to acknowledge the grief of the exiled community stems from a deeper unwillingness to look into the mirror that squarely projects where they failed, where neighbourhoods fell silent, and where humanity abdicated.

Beyond the squalor of some makeshift ghettos for the employees, and the token renovation of some vandalised temples, the ground itself remains unprepared: no security guaranteed, no restitution offered, no sincere invitation extended that is worthy of the name “home”. Many vested interests ;  including those who either grabbed Kashmiri Pandit properties or bought them for peanuts , now treat the return of the exiled natives as trespass.

The voices in exile that once thundered for return have been summoned, one by one, to their heavenly abodes, their keys still clutched in trembling hands, their prayers still addressed to courtyards they may never cross again. The generation that remains now walks the same narrowing road towards the other world, carrying memories that exist only in elegies.

We see it in the attrition of language. Words for snow, for the first bloom of almond, for the turn of a lane in Rainawari, they grow faint on younger tongues. We see it in the erasure of address. What is not spoken, rots. What is not recorded, vanishes.

And when the last eye that remembers those old addresses finally closes, when the last tongue that can pronounce the localities of the old city or the ghats of Jhelum is stilled, the demand to return may be declared settled by default, the ledger closed by extinction rather than justice.

So we must ask, with all the gravity this moment demands: are heartless politicians or any other powerful group, paying lip service to the Kashmiri Pandit cause, merely biding their time, waiting for memory to die ... so that justice can be buried, and history rewritten in the silence? It happens. Insensitive people at the helm of affairs do try to run out the clock. The quiet that follows can get filled with a new story, one that suits them.

But memory is stubborn. It doesn’t only live in people. It hides in letters, in photos, in books, in art, in theatre, in songs, in films and in the foundations of new structures created over old buildings. It gets carried by children who weren’t there but heard the story anyway. It lives in the fold of a pheran kept in a trunk in Jaipur or Jammu. It lives in the weight of dejhoor or the design of a Pashmina shawl passed from a mother to a daughter who has never seen Kashmir. It lives in the Isband( rue seeds)  being burnt in a Kangri to welcome guests.

Justice delayed is justice denied. But memory denied does not die. It waits. It refuses to surrender. It insists. And one day, it returns, not as trespass, but as title.

(Avtar Mota)

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

WHEN EVENING VISITS PARIS

                                           

 WHEN EVENING VISITS PARIS

Twilight in Paris is not an hour. It is a decision the city makes.  

The light begins to soften somewhere above the zinc rooftops, and the hard geometry of Haussmann’s boulevards gives way to something more forgiving. This is when evening visits Paris, not with a knock, but as an old friend who already knows where the spare key is hidden. It doesn’t arrive; it permeates.

Down on the crowded cafés, the city’s first philosophy takes place. Tables spill onto the pavement like afterthoughts. The clatter of saucers and spoons, the sharp hiss of an espresso machine, the low murmur of debate: these are the city’s evening prayers. At Café de Flore, the air warms up with intellectual gossip. Someone is dismantling Sartre between sips of Sancerre, while another argues that beauty is just math that learned how to smile. Here, ideas are not archived in libraries. They are tried on, like scarves, tested for weight and colour, then discarded or kept.

Walk the busy cobblestone paths along the Seine River, and you see the second thesis: motion as communion. River cruises cut gold lines through the water, their windows lit like stringed lanterns. On board, strangers become temporary constellations, bound by the same reflected Notre-Dame. The cathedral herself exhales. Daytime has been merciless: a tide of pilgrims, cameras, reverent whispers turned to noise. Now, in the blue hour, her buttresses stretch. She belongs again to the gargoyles and the wind. Along the promenades, artists pack up. Easels fold, canvases still wet with the river’s light are tucked under arms. The caricaturists cap their pens, their day’s faces filed away. Shoppers on promenades clutch bags and baguettes with equal reverence. Fashion passes you in fragments: a vintage trench, a neon sneaker, a silk headscarf knotted with precision. Individuality in Paris is not rebellion. It is curation.

The bars begin to hum, not loudly, but with the confidence of a cello in an empty church. Wine is poured like a slow argument. Hands find other hands on the walk home, not from necessity but from grammar. To be in Paris at dusk is to be conjugated: "je suis, tu es, nous sommes". Smiles are exchanged between strangers with the ease of borrowed light.

Then there is Montmartre. The hill is crowded, always, as if the city tilts and everyone slides there when the sun slips. The view from the top says nothing new, and that is its power. Paris does not reinvent itself at twilight. It remembers.

As dusk settles, Paris theatres shake off the day’s quiet and breathe. Chandeliers flicker on inside Opéra Garnier, gilding marble and velvet before the curtain lifts. Along Boulevard Montmartre, playhouses spill warm light onto wet cobbles, and the hum of last-minute ticket buyers mixes with the clatter of bistro chairs. Ushers straighten their lapels, actors pace behind crimson curtains, and the city’s pulse slows just enough to listen. One moment, the street belongs to horns and hurried footsteps; the next, a hush falls, doors close, and stories begin. Evening doesn’t arrive in Paris — it takes the stage.

And across the city, the museums feel tired. They have been dutiful hosts all day, enduring the shuffle of thousands, the camera flashes, the practised awe. Now the Louvre’s glass pyramid reflects only sky, not selfie sticks. Inside, the Mona Lisa is finally alone with her guards. Culture, too, needs to exhale. Evening gives it back to itself.

Even the dead keep better hours now. In Père Lachaise and Montparnasse, the cemeteries hold their VVIPs: Oscar Wilde, Maupassant, Sartre, Baudelaire, Piaf, Morrison, Proust and many more. By day, they are tourist attractions, their graves littered with metro tickets and lipstick kisses. But at dusk, the gates lock. The famous dead return to themselves. Paris understands that even immortality deserves privacy. The city is democratic in life, and oddly exclusive in death. Evening restores the hierarchy of silence.

So what does evening teach, when it visits Paris?

First, that solitude is a public act. You can be alone at a café table for hours, and still be part of the city’s conversation. Second, that time is measured differently after dusk. The river does not hurry. Evening in Paris argues against efficiency. It says: linger. Third, that individuality needs a witness. Fashion is not for the mirror. To dress in Paris at night is to join a silent colloquium on the self. Fourth, that exhaustion is sacred. Notre-Dame, the museums, even the dead: all are granted the dignity of rest. The city knows that wonder cannot be mass-produced from 9 to 5. It must be rationed, like good wine.

Evening air in Paris turns perfumed the moment the sun slips behind limestone rooftops. Flower stalls mist their roses and linden, and the cooling air pins the scent low between cobbles. Crêpe griddles and rotisseries fire up for apéro, threading butter, thyme, and melting cheese through the streets. Parisians reapply jasmine and amber as day cologne fades, so every passage fills with layered notes of skin and silk. Rain-damp stone and candlelit brocantes release moss, wax, and sandalwood while the Seine gives up a green, mineral breath. It isn’t one fragrance;  it’s flowers, food, people, and old buildings exhaling at once, the city marking dusk with scent.

As dusk settles over Montmartre, the Moulin Rouge awakens. Its red windmill blades turn slowly against a deepening blue sky, whilst the façade blazes with Belle Époque bulbs that spill gold onto Boulevard de Clichy. The queue outside becomes its own performance: tourists clutching tickets, couples in evening wear, fashion borrowed from the pages of Vogue. Inside, velvet and mirrors catch the first notes of the orchestra, and champagne uncorks like punctuation to the city’s exhale. The can-can begins, a controlled explosion of ruffles, boots, and kicks that Toulouse-Lautrec would still recognise. For a few hours the world outside narrows to this stage. Pleasure, artifice, and labour blur into one choreography. Paris at night sells its oldest dream here, and the audience pays willingly.

When evening visits Paris, it does not come to change the city. It comes to reveal it. The day has edges, appointments, and purpose. Night has mystery, abandon. But twilight has honesty. In that blue hour, the city stops performing Paris and just becomes it: crowded, luminous, contradictory, alive. The artists go home. The celebrities in stone are left alone. The river carries only light. 

Evening does not fall on Paris. Paris rises to meet it.

( Avtar Mota)                                           

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

THE SPECTACLE OF SUNRISE IN PARIS

                                             

               

     

     

     

                  

                  

                   

      

                                              

         

                  

        

                     

THE SPECTACLE  OF SUNRISE  IN PARIS

Sunrise in Paris is less an astronomical event than a quiet referendum on the city’s covenant with time. While night is a studied performance of eternity ; the Eiffel Tower rehearsing its sparkle, the Seine River duplicating monuments for lovers and insomniacs , dawn arrives as an unrehearsed truth, indifferent to myth. The hour itself shifts with the seasons, disobedient to human desire: summer drags it towards 6 a.m., winter withholds it until 8:45 a.m., as if the city must earn its light through patience. And so sunrise exposes the paradox of Paris. By night, the city declares that beauty must be illuminated to exist. By dawn, natural light arrives without permission, stripping the boulevards of their theatrical gold and returning them to stone, glass, and the ordinary labor of waking.

It begins with fresh air ; cold, unowned, moving through the city before anyone can market it. The sky softens from indigo to pearl, and with it the first birds reclaim Notre-Dame’s towers, their calls stitching the silence left by late cafés. The promenades along the Seine River come to life not as postcards but as arteries: joggers trace the quays with disciplined breath, their footsteps a metronome counting the city back into motion. Flower vendors at Quai de la Mégisserie arrange colour against the pale light. Tourists emerge bleary and determined, maps already creasing, chasing the hour before crowds re-colonise the Louvre museum 's courtyard. 

And then the city inhales. From boulangeries; on every arrondissement corner comes the tempting smell of bakeries at work , butter surrendering in hot ovens, yeast exhaling through crust, baguettes splitting their seams with a sound like a vow. It is the oldest argument against nihilism, drifting down Rue Mouffetard and across Pont Neuf: that if the universe is indifferent, it still permits this. The scent precedes reason, precedes language. Jean Paul Sartre may choose his essence, but no one chooses to ignore a warm' pain au chocolat'. 

Meanwhile restaurants and cafés unshutter with a clatter of iron and wood, chairs scraping sidewalks like a morning benediction. Espresso machines hiss themselves awake at Le Deux Magots and nameless corner zinc bars alike. Croissants, proofed through the night, are slid from trays to baskets , and waiters in white aprons adjust tables with geometric care, setting out sugar cubes and spoons as if laying offerings for a daylight deity. They prepare not just for customers, but for the idea of communion: the possibility that a stranger will sit, order, linger, and be transformed by coffee, bread, and conversation.

Below them, the Metro exhales its first trains, steel wheels inscribing Heidegger’s “everyday” into the tunnels, carrying the bakers, nurses, and sweepers who confess through labour that existence precedes essence. The first light on the glass pyramid does not wait for applause; the gilded dome of'Les Invalides' does not care that it was designed for spectacle. Here technology ; the lamps, the monuments, the curated glow recedes, and physis, nature’s self-emergence, reclaims its primacy.

Sunrise therefore humbles Paris. It reminds the city that it is not the author of its own radiance but a borrower, given a few hours each day to justify the lamps it kept burning all night. Night in Paris is the dream of what we wish to be; sunrise is the verdict of what we are. Yet because dawn is unasked for, it becomes the more profound gift. The same Seine River that turned cathedrals into liquid impressionism at midnight now reflects a cold, exact sky, and in that honesty there is a different kind of beauty: not chosen, not staged, but granted. Thus sunrise time in Paris is philosophy embodied the moment when the city ceases to perform immortality and consents, briefly, to mortality, only to find that morning light, fresh air, birds, joggers, the tempting smell of boulangeries , and the first coffee poured for an empty chair forgive it anyway.

If night is when Paris seduces the world with the myth of its own permanence, then sunrise is when Paris remembers it is mortal , and chooses to begin again anyway. The lamps go out, but the city does not. Instead it breathes, bakes, pours, and runs, proving that meaning is not kept in monuments but made daily by bodies in motion: the jogger’s discipline, the baker’s heat, the waiter’s first open chair. Sunrise grants no spotlight and asks no worship; it only offers light, air, and the chance to participate. In that unasked gift, Paris reveals its truest philosophy: that beauty is not what we illuminate, but what remains when the illumination ends. And so each dawn the city consents to time, to work, to hunger and hope, trusting that a baguette still warm, a seat still empty, and a sky still pearl-grey are enough to start the argument for existence all over again.

Some cities you visit. Paris visits you, and never leaves. It welcomes everyone , even strangers with a smile. I end this write up with a mini poem of Parveen Shakir :

(I will Miss you )

Jaane se pehle

Oss ne mere aanchal se

Ek phiqra baandh diya

“ I will Miss You “

Saara safar

Khushboo mein basa raha

....... ( Parveen Shakir )

(Before he left,

He knotted a sentence into the hem of my scarf;

" I will miss you."

Since then,

The whole journey 

Has lingered, fragrant.) 

(Avtar Mota)

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.